The future of Medieval Music

Since medieval music is ontologically a thing of the past, one
should rightly ask whether it can have a future at all. In the
simplest sense, someone will be performing something called
"medieval music" tomorrow, and so it clearly does have
a future. Indeed, it is booming. For instance, there is little
doubt that (even by percentage) far more people have heard of
Hildegard today than when she was alive. Medieval music is serving
to resurrect the art tradition among a larger segment of
the population. I think it also leads naturally to an interest in
the continuation of that tradition in later stylistic eras. When
it comes to the future, and this is an issue in the back of my mind
whenever I write here, the real question is how the resurrection
of medieval styles will influence subsequent composition and original
music-making. In short, will composers incorporate medieval
stylistic traits, and if so how? The former answer must be
affirmative, while the latter is more intriguing. It cannot be
circumscribed here, at least hopefully not, but some idle thoughts
may prove stimulating at this point.

While it is still popular to posit simpler or even naïve
ideas and styles to medieval composers, acquaintance with the music
shows otherwise. In many ways, this is the West's most abstract
music prior to the twentieth century. The distinction is that the
intricacies are in directions other than those of the more familiar
core classical repertory. For many listeners, anything outside of
triadic harmony will sound unsophisticated, and music prior to its
development will be viewed as a primitive precursor. That is their
loss, certainly, and of course many will have no more interest in
new music than they have in old. There is also a rather bizarre
argument over the "character" of this music which pops
up here & there, from one week to the next. Namely, whether
this music was ever "popular" is apparently of great
concern to some people. I have implied in the past that it was
elite in the sense that e.g. polytextual interplay would not be
dumbed down in Ars Nova motets. However, it is also significant
to add that "dumbing down" is a more recent phenomenon,
and that there is no indication that earlier groups of people
insisted that they were superior in their ignorance (as so many do
today). In short, there was little to prevent someone from another
class taking an interest and becoming a professional musician, etc.
In that sense, the culture was an icon, whether it was fully
understood or not. Well, this is how I view it.

If we allow that medieval music can be as sophisticated and
inherently intriguing as that in another style, it becomes evident
that composers will incorporate some of its traits as they are
exposed to them. In fact, there are already many examples. One
of the first groups to look to medieval music was the minimalists,
who found some of the static quality
they wanted in the lack of key changes. Of course, the models
usually have far more activity than the minimalist compositions
inspired by them. Much of this is due to the fact the medieval
works are generally quite compact, even densely packed with activity,
while the minimalists will stretch a similar procedure over a much
larger span of time. The latter is not an approach I enjoy, as I
look for a density of ideas in music. Perhaps ironically, that's
much of what I enjoy about medieval music, as so much of the Baroque
& Classical music seems similarly stretched and consequently
empty. I don't listen to music for background or diversion, and
those were purposes which became more
important in the Baroque & Classical eras. The other major
example is serialism going back to Webern, in which the very dense
abbreviation of style was likewise motivated by medieval (or
Renaissance) traits. That juxtaposition, between say Pärt
& Webern, is probably enough to exhibit the depth of ramification
which medieval music can have on contemporary
composition. There are innumerable prospective directions in
which various traditional ideas could yet be developed, and simply
coming to terms with that fact can prove quite disorienting. What
is perhaps most difficult is to provide the listener an orientation
for expectations, given that there are nine centuries of stylistic
influences from which to choose.

There are basically two poles to an endeavor of this sort: write
something specifically based on one style, or use anything &
everything. The latter is certainly more natural, given the huge
variety of auditory influences the inquisitive musician will have
today, but it presents some difficulties. For one, there is the
matter of the listeners' expectations, and that is an issue which
contemporary composers in many styles have faced. Without a set
of concrete expectations against which
to play, such as major-minor tonality or fifths at cadences,
each piece must build its own context. While in some sense this
is the ultimate in abstract art, it
is also prohibitively difficult to be successful, and at the very
least requires a large investment from the listener. It isn't so
much the specific system which is significant here, only that the
listener have some set of appropriate expectations. When it comes
to staying within a particular style, and I believe there are some
merits to this idea in the case of relatively "new"
directions such as medieval techniques, there is always a tendency
toward artistic growth and that growth will almost necessarily be
influenced by other styles. So one cannot feign ignorance of the
intervening centuries, at least not for long. Of course the natural
result is that composers typically pick a subset of stylistic traits
& methods and work on developing those, perhaps slowly adding
some other ideas. For now, medieval music is one of those other
ideas, as its application in contemporary composition has not been
very thorough thus far. It is a level of thoroughness which I
seek, rather than a sense of dabbling.

Although I certainly mean no disrespect to those practicing
them, the use of specifically medieval idioms in new music has
found little success with me. In some ways, the inevitable
comparisons are unfair, since who is to measure up to
Machaut? We have more or less the
choice of centuries, against which modern composers will be judged.
It is definitely intimidating, so I still feel good about those
who try, even if I haven't enjoyed their music. And I can't claim
to have met with any success myself. An optimistic note is that
there is surely composition going on about which I am blissfully
unaware, so perhaps the situation is better than I imagine. On
that note, I'd like to invite anyone reading this to make suggestions
for composers writing in medieval idioms today. I'd like to write
some more specific discussion of individual pieces, but have been
equivocating because I don't feel like I have much nice to say.
Perhaps what is really needed is a deeper synthesis in which the
individual stylistic traits are not so easily distinguished. While
this is surely true, more modest objectives are important too. As
stated early in the life of this column,
I still see the primary task as hard work, because barring an early
immersion which can be at most partial, only study can make the
music seem real rather than a curiosity.